"Your console has been banned." For many gaming enthusiasts, perhaps nothing is more unnerving than the prospect of losing the ability to duel with friends and strangers over the Internet for hours on end. Yet earlier this month, this fear became a reality for many Xbox owners when Microsoft banned a large number of consoles from its Xbox Live service. The move effectively prevents the machines from playing games online, and according to reportssofar, the ban allegedly only affects consoles that have been modified by users in order to play pirated games.

One cannot go online today without eventually being asked to accept a set of so-called Terms of Service (or TOS). Such TOS agreements have become ubiquitous to websites and other online services in the same way End User License Agreements (EULAs) have become the mainstay of the software industry. Yet while we are often aware that such Terms of Service exist, very few of us know and understand what they actually say.